The 4 Industries Blockchain Will Impact...

The 4 Industries Blockchain Will Impact the Most

Blockchain is the center of attention for so many in the tech world, as its ability to decentralize and secure projects adds tremendous value and the potential to permanently disrupt numerous industries. Despite the enormous hype surrounding it and the billions of dollars invested, blockchain is still in its early stages, and experts in the field have been left to predict which industries will be disrupted the most.

Silicon.nyc has been on the forefront of reporting on blockchain’s developments and potential impacts, and below is a compilation of articles discussing blockchain’s disruptive potential in some of the largest industries in the world.

Here are the 4 industries that blockchain experts believe will be impacted the most by the adoption of this technology:

Healthcare

Within the healthcare industry, blockchain can automate and decentralize patient-provider functions that are currently highly time-consuming and highly costly. The main pain points in healthcare revolve around data control and management. It is because of this that the main value proposition blockchain brings to the healthcare industry is enhanced security and interoperability.

More to the point, the technology’s decentralized nature creates potential for hospitals and other healthcare providers to break down data access hierarchies and provide every individual in the health delivery and health consumption value chain with equal access to relevant healthcare data, while maintaining patient privacy and upholding HIPAA. This is only possible because each block—a piece of the infinitely growing data chain—is encrypted, which means even if made public (which the blockchain essentially is), none of the blocks can be modified in any way.

Banking

This singular capability of blockchain’s most popular banking use case, called distributed ledger technology, holds the key for permanently reducing cost and time, enabling 100% trust between any and all business participants engaging with banks across industries. Most compelling is that since the process is all digital. Integration, implementation and execution would all be relatively inexpensive.

Yet, with all this said, the most exciting aspect of blockchain’s applications in banking has nothing to do with the banks themselves. More to the point, blockchain’s most exciting application in banking is one that may make banks obsolete: decentralized transactions. The shared distributed ledger holds the potential for C2C (customer-to-customer), not just B2C (bank-to-customer) or B2B (bank-to-bank) banking applications.\

Voting

Looking through this lens, integrating blockchain into the United States’ voting infrastructure would force voting commissions, politically active nonprofits, political consulting firms, and political parties on every level to refocus their workforce hiring priorities, at least in part, on cryptographers and cybersecurity professionals, and place more value on contracting 3rd party service providers with those skill sets in order to implement blockchain’s electioneering use case.

As a result, though elections would become much safer, voter distribution by demographic in terms of age, race/ethnicity, and candidate preferences would change to favor candidates in districts where voters have ample resources to educate themselves to use the new technology competently.

Energy

The disintermediative properties of blockchain are well-documented. Perhaps this singular quality of blockchain is responsible for industry leaders feeling they have much to lose if their sector fails to adopt the technology. Indeed, should utility companies fail to integrate blockchain into their existing systems and business models, they could find it increasingly difficult to both compete with nimbler and smaller energy companies selling directly to consumers and to control costs, and retain paying customers, as average consumers flock to cheaper and more direct alternatives.

Yet, this supposes an over-simplistic view of the energy industry—nothing ever changes overnight. Empowering consumers globally to sell each other energy is the logical, yet far-off end of blockchain technology. Scaled down to the local level, however, blockchain-based energy commerce is much more tractable and realistic. Nowhere has this concept been tested and proven more than in New York City.

Conclusion

Blockchain’s potential is undeniable, and as more and more projects successfully bring its benefits to the public, its overall impact on various aspects of modern life will grow. These are just some of the many industries that are ready to be disrupted through blockchain technology, and the onus is now on these blockchain experts and visionaries to make it a reality.

On Silicon.nyc, we will continue to watch and report on the exciting developments in this technology, both in New York City and out. Stay tuned.

If you are looking to make blockchain use cases a reality for your company, BlockchainDriven is a leading NYC blockchain consultancy firm that specializes in small and medium sized companies.